Monday, May 17, 2010

Tiny Bubbles (and Brains)

I love it when those who've swallowed the "victim group" Kool Aid endeavour to work their way out of the fine mess their philosophy has gotten them--and us--into. Case in point: Bernie Farber, who simply cannot fathom how "Nazis" and now "shiksas" have found their way into the ranking of the select--or should I say the "chosen"? Joseph Brean of the National Post has the hugely amusing details (h/t BCF):

The Canadian Jewish Congress says the Toronto Police Service is pushing anti-hate law "to its most absurd level" by listing "non-Jewish Shiksa" as a victim category in its latest hate crime study.

The statistical report reveals that officers investigated hate crimes in Toronto last year against such unusual victim groups as teachers, feminists, infidels, police, Nazis and pedophiles.

But it is the redundantly named category of "non-Jewish Shiksa" -- a slur for a non-Jewish woman, from a Hebrew root meaning "a detested thing" -- that has especially baffled the CJC, a prominent advocate for stronger hate crime laws.

"You just can't apply it to literally everything," said CEO Bernie Farber...

You can't? Could have fooled me and, oh yeah, Barbara Hall, too (whose malign influence may well be in play here). To return to the article:

The report, not yet released on the TPS website, shows an increase in "hate/bias occurrences" over the year before, from 153 to 174, with 23 charges laid.

Jewish, black, and LGBT were the top victim categories, but Tamils also registered, with six occurrences. By far the most common crime was mischief, usually graffiti, followed by assault and threatening.

Hey, we're number one! (High fives and back pats all round.) Now, what's the deal with the "shiksaphobia," Joe?

The 2009 shiksa incident, classified as "mischief," happened in 53 Division, a central uptown area colloquially known among police as "Sleepy Hollow" because it includes the city's most pleasant residential communities, including some of the Jewish neighbourhoods around Bathurst and Lawrence.

It is not known whether a charge was laid, or a prosecution successful.

A letter of complaint to Alok Mukherjee, chairman of the Toronto Police Services Board, says the CJC is "frankly mystified," not just because "shiksa" is "sometimes used as a pejorative" and is therefore "inappropriate" for an official police category, but because hate crime sentencing provisions were meant to reflect not just simple membership in a group, but an "unchangeable" or "inescapable" aspect of the victim.

The letter also objects to the "police" category because police already enjoy special legal protection under the Criminal Code, and "Nazi" because political beliefs are not grounds for a hate crime. The letter does not mention feminists, teachers, infidels or pedophiles.

Well, why the heck doesn't it? And for that matter, what about Trekkers, fashionistas, bowlers and fans of the 7/11 Big Gulp? They can be "victims," too, you know. Let's see what the law has to say about it:

The Criminal Code allows for sentences to be increased if there is "evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor."

It is those last five words that give rise to the category controversy.

"While it is recognized that every individual has multiple aspects to their identity, more than one of which could be cause for an offender to target them, it is the practice of the [Toronto Police Service Hate Crime] Unit to classify a hate/ bias occurrence based on the best known information that exists relevant to the offender's perception of the victim," the report reads.

The term shiksa was given its full literary expression in Portnoy's Complaint, Phillip Roth's 1969 novel about adolescent sexual frustration, in which a Jewish protagonist agonizes over bad girls like Bubbles Girardi...

Memo to Bernie: In the bad novel we seem to find ourselves in, the one written by Wile E. Trudeau and his retinue of Trudeaupian nitwits around the same time that Roth was penning his "complaint," we are all--with the notable exception of the wicked white "hegemon"--Bubbles Girardi.

Update: All joking aside, the inclusion of "Nazi" and "shiksa" as "victim groups" is actually an immense slap in Jews' face. "Victim group" doctrine holds that victims cannot--can never--be victimizers (the flip side of Bernie's observation that Nazis can only be victimizers, not victims). But now, of all the victim groups, Jews have been singled out as the exception to this rule (for who is likely to be "victimizing" "Nazis" and "shiksas" if it isn't the Jews?). It is extremely revealing--and more than a little unsettling--that, for example, "honkeys," "gringos" and "kafirs"--perjoratives used by other "victim" groups--did not (and, I have no doubt, never will) make the police list.